JasonHamilton - 1:37 am on Nov 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

Oh, I said a lot in my previous post, but I forgot to post what I had originally wanted to say.

There are technical reasons against logging chat on IRC.

1) It's not designed to be logged on that kind of scale. Only users within a channel are set to receive the messages said in a channel.
2) Even if google had a hub on each network, messages to a channel only pass through the hub if a recipient is on a server on the other side of the hub.
3) Joining thousands of channels is not possible - most IRC networks limit users to 10 channels at a time. Thousands of robots on the major networks is not likely to be allowed, no matter how nicely google asks.
4) Google linking pseudo-servers to each network and launching pseudo-users into the channels isn't likely to happen either - there are reasons why services like ChanServ do not sit inside channels. The net.burst tends to be several megs, eating up bandwidth and resources as the networks rush to sync up with each other.

Ultimately, I just don't see users wanting their discussions published in a public forum, especially when it's for the monetary benefit of a company. HOWEVER, that isn't to say that IRC itself has no commercial value or no use to google. I just don't see that channel logging *specifically* as having any place.